Footballers 'raped Drunk Teenager’

11 April 2012, 16:02

A court has heard that two footballers, including a Sheffield United player took a drunk girl back to their hotel and raped her, while two friends watched and filmed it.

Wales and Sheffield United striker 23 year old Ched Evans, and Clayton McDonald, also 23, deny the attack which allegedly took place at a Premier Inn near Rhyl, North Wales, during a bank holiday last May.

John Philpotts, prosecuting, told Caernarfon Crown Court that Port Vale defender McDonald from Crewe, and Evans, from Ashtree Gardens, Millhouse Green, Penistone in South Yorkshire, had admitted having sex with the girl.

But he said the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was too drunk to consent to sexual intercourse.

Mr Philpotts said that while the attack happened Jack Higgins, an “associate” of the footballers, and Ryan Roberts, Evans's brother, had watched through a window. Video recordings found on Mr Higgins's phone showed that he had been filming or trying to film the incident.

The court heard that the football players had spent the night with friends in Rhyl.

In the early hours of Monday May 30, McDonald got into a taxi which the girl had flagged down.

He then took the woman, whom he had seen fall over in a kebab shop, to the Premier Inn hotel as he called someone on his phone to say he had “got a girl”.

The woman had been drinking wine, vodka with lemonade and had also had a sambuca shot.

A receptionist at the hotel described the woman, who was 19 at the time and worked in a restaurant, as “extremely drunk” and said she was “stumbling” and “slurring” and occasionally grabbing hold of McDonald to steady herself.

Shortly after McDonald and the girl arrived at the hotel, Sheffield United’s Evan came in to the reception and asked for the keys to a room. Two men, who the prosecution say were Jack Higgins and Ryan Roberts, waited outside.

Mr Philpotts said: “Ched Evans had booked that room with the main or sole purpose of procuring a girl or girls that night. He and Clayton McDonald were on the lookout for any girl who was a suitable target and the claimant had literally stumbled across their path.”